Through Mauss’s theory of gift exchange, the Perry Expedition’s objects can be understood as political tools designed to create binding obligations. Perry’s gifts, including rifles, telegraph machines, miniature locomotives and other technological wonders, were not gestures of goodwill but strategic offerings that compelled Japan to respond in kind. Mauss helps us see how the entire expedition operated as a staged exchange in which the United States positioned itself as a generous yet dominant giver, ensuring that Japan’s return gift took the form of diplomatic concessions and the eventual opening of its ports. In this way, both the objects and Perry’s carefully orchestrated presentation of them fulfilled Mauss’s principle that gifts carry power, expectation and the capacity to reshape relationships.

Mintz’s insights on how commodities structure global systems allow us to interpret the expedition as part of a broader project of economic incorporation. The American objects Perry brought were not only technologically advanced; they carried within them the logic of an expanding capitalist world order. By showcasing manufactured goods and industrial capabilities, the expedition worked to draw Japan into emerging commercial networks shaped by the United States. Mintz helps us understand that these objects served as early signals of a reorganized global economy in which Japan would become a participant in American trade, production and consumption systems. This perspective shows that the expedition’s material exchanges were part of a larger realignment of global economic power.

Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism highlights how Perry’s objects initially took on symbolic meanings that obscured the political force behind them. To many Japanese observers, the steam-driven machinery and telegraph equipment appeared almost magical at first encounter, embodying a foreign technological system that was unfamiliar and visually impressive. The exaggerated facial features in some Japanese depictions of the Black Ships can be read through this lens, as the vessels are shown in ways that make their power seem inherent to the object itself rather than to the political and social forces behind it. Yet this sense of awe did not last long. Japanese artisans, engineers, and intellectuals quickly began studying, sketching, and reverse-engineering these devices, laying the groundwork for rapid technological development in the years that followed. In this way, the very logic of industrial commoditization that Perry introduced spread quickly, transforming Japanese society far beyond the immediate diplomatic encounter.

Marx helps reveal that the ideological power of these objects did not lie solely in their spectacle, but in how they carried the social relations and industrial assumptions of the United States into Japan. Their presence helped normalize a new kind of technological modernity and encouraged forms of production and replication that aligned with global capitalist expansion. Even as the initial mystery faded, the objects continued to function politically by reshaping what counted as progress and by prompting Japan to enter the competitive industrial order on its own terms. Under Marx’s lens, the expedition becomes not only an example of commodities disguising relations of domination, but also a moment when those commodities set in motion a broader transformation of labor, technology, and value within Japan itself.